Collaboration: An Ode to Agent Cooper

One of the superb issues concerning the specialty coffee group is that the eagerness for all issues scrumptious doesn’t cease with coffee. Exploring our method by way of wine, gin, craft beer, scotch, sherry and quite a few different drinks is a standard after hours previous time. And as so many of those distillers and brewers are simply as keen about their craft as we’re about coffee, a singular collaboration simply made sense.

First off, I’ve to admit that I’ve by no means actually been a fan of coffee beer. In the previous, nearly all of coffee beers tasted like bitter, burnt darkish coffee or like a pot of drip from an American diner. The answer? Get the brewers to do what they do excellently – brew tasty beer – and have the coffee people work on the coffee element. Here’s what went down…

The Concept

Eating a cherry ripe bar after consuming coffee.

Thankfully this sounded simply as scrumptious (though probably slightly obscure) to different Five Senses people. Hence the cherry coffee porter!

The Beer

After pitching the thought to gypsy brewers Old Wives Ales, they acquired on board right away. As a smaller brewery who roam round Melbourne brewing at numerous places, they have been open to a one-off, 1000L brew. This sounds massive, however it’s undoubtedly on the small aspect of brewing.

Deciding on a cherry porter base, Shannon (one of many brewers) got here to our Barista Academy with a small 9L keg of check batch cherry porter to experiment with ratios of chilly brew to beer. Perks of the job 😉

The Challenge: discovering the best stability of coffee to beer so that a) the drink was balanced b) it didn’t dilute the mouthfeel and c) it didn’t drop the ABV an excessive amount of.

We nailed A … however after performing some fast calculations, we realised we’d have wanted 250L of chilly brew to proceed down that path. That is extra chilly brew than we’d like to make with out business gear (means too many batches in a 10L Toddy). The beer tasted wonderful. So the brand new problem was to maintain up our half – the coffee.

The Coffee

The Challenge: to scale back the full quantity of brew whereas nonetheless delivering the identical coffee depth.

Leo was my companion in crime and this was his job. It was fairly the duty! He carried out many, many experiments to scale back the quantity of chilly brew together with …– Increasing dosage.– Grinding the coffee finer.– Increasing contact time.– Brewing chilly brew with batch brew as an alternative of water.– Brewing chilly brew with chilly brew as an alternative of water.

Spoiler alert: not one of the above strategies resulted in a focus that was robust sufficient with out being over-extracted and bitter – which was precisely what we have been decided to keep away from!

Leo considering what number of litres of chilly brew distillation he has forward of him…

The answer: sub-zero gravity conditioned coffee elixir.

The chilly brew was frozen after which thawed out over a interval of round 4 hours. As it thawed, we collected the soften. The preliminary brew underwent a means of separation when it froze. The water (which shaped nearly all of the chilly brew) created giant, secure ice crystals. Meanwhile the liquid, which contained plenty of the dissolved materials, shaped smaller and fewer secure ice crystals. Consequently when it thawed, the smaller ice crystals (containing nearly all of our soluble materials) melted first, giving us a focus with out that over extracted bitterness. We acquired an enormous, tasty beer with out watering it down.

Brew day

At this stage, the porter had 50kgs of blitzed, vacuumed sealed and pasteurized bitter Morello cherries (seven hours straight of mixing by poor Shannon!) added to it on the finish of fermentation and was prepared for the chilly brew focus. Armed with 80L of this focus and two ladders, we crammed the adjourning tank with chilly brew. This tank was then pressurised and flushed with carbon dioxide earlier than being pumped throughout to the beer tank. Twenty minutes of carbonation later, it was prepared to style check!

Many Hands (and a number of other beers) make mild work

An Ode to Agent Cooper really was a labour of affection. Only a few kegs and 80 instances of this beer have been made. It was an absolute pleasure working with individuals as keen about deliciousness as we’re!